


Triptych

by Ankaret



Category: Marlow series - Forest
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-13
Updated: 2009-12-13
Packaged: 2017-10-04 09:40:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ankaret/pseuds/Ankaret
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Marlow ensemble piece. Includes some understated slash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Triptych

**Lot 15: an important late Georgian mahogany sideboard, the panels carved with hunting scenes (plate 7A). Some restoration to the back due to woodworm during the last century. Full provenance. Reserve set at £855.**

"So, what's happening to this place, then?"

"War museum, so they say - pass me that duster - someone rang up this morning with a tale of how her old man was a Commando or a Commodore or something here and would we take some of his old things she'd been keeping in the shed."

"What did you do?"

"Gave her that Mrs Reynolds' number, what else? She's the one whose _friend in local government_ got the war museum people to buy this great barn instead of that little house they were looking at next to the old airfield."

"I thought that was the other one who had the friend."

"They both look the same to me. I'll tell you something, if that was my money the Local Council was spending - "

"_Is_ it the Local Council?"

"I don't know, they keep changing the names around every few years. Like I was saying, if that was my money the Council was spending, _which_ it is, I'd get the buses running on time and do something about those cliffs. Proper death-trap they are. And I'll tell you something else, I don't know why we're titivating this place up when they're only going to take the walls out between here and the sitting-room so they can put in a lot of dirty planes."

"_Planes?_"

"That's right, didn't you hear me tell you it was all to do with the airfield and the War? There's a collection coming in next week all the way from Northumberland, on a fleet of great lorries clogging the roads up and on Market Day too, I shouldn't wonder. Collecting planes indeed. I don't know why people can't stick to butterflies or stamps. Give me that trolley, Judith, I'll do this last bit and you can go and put the tea on."

"I don't want tea."

"Not for you and me, for this Mzzzzzzz West who's coming over to look at the furniture. Suppose she likes furniture better than planes. Can't say as I blame her. Cup and saucer, mind, not mug. Be funny, won't it, this place not having Marlows in it any more? Still, I s'pose there haven't been many of them around these past few years."

"My Edward was in a play with some of the little ones, once."

"Oh, yes, was he? The Commander's little boy and girl? I'd have thought your Edward was too old. Do you still get cards from him now and then?"

"Since his father died - a call - sometimes - I don't remember whose children they were, really. I'll go and put the kettle on. I always did wonder - "

"About the Commander's little boy showing up like that five months after the wedding? _What_ a palaver. I'd never have thought that nice Miss Frewen he married was the type."

"No, not that. I mean - I just wonder - there was that boat that got wrecked, the week Edward disappeared after the school play..."

"Surprised you remember anything of that week, if you don't mind me saying so, and your Edward wasn't in any shipwreck. Not many shipwrecks in Switzerland, I don't suppose."

"No - I - It doesn't matter. I'll go and make the tea, shall I? Don't you bother if I'm a little while, it always takes a long time in places like this to find somewhere to plug the urn in and then go looking for the cups and saucers."

"Just as you like, m'dear, I can see I'll be at this a fair while yet."

**Lot 30: a 1950s Bell and Howell 624 cine camera, complete with working inner 25m takeup reel. In fine condition. Also a box of other assorted camera equipment, a box of odd china and a claw-footed footstool.**

"_Footfalls echo in the memory  
Down the passage which we did not take   
Towards the door we never opened   
Into the rose-garden._ Except it's syringas, of course. Cripes, doesn't it look tidy these days?"

"They've got rid of the fountain."

"Yes. Dear Mamma always said it did nothing but attract midges. Do you remember how I used to run round at the top shouting that these were the walls of Troy?"

"Yes. I wish I'd thought to tell you that they lost."

"I wonder whether I could get up there again. Give me a leg-up."

"Don't be stupid, you weigh a good deal more than you did when you were eight."

"How _shattering_ for my ego, Peter my love! Anyway, so do you. It'd be very good for you to still have to rush through portholes and up and down companion-ladders at all hours of the day and night like your brother Giles."

"Through _portholes_? He's aircraft-carriering round the gulf, not overseeing the wreck of the Titanic."

"And a good thing you're not. Even if it does make you look stockbrokerly. Will you be able to bear to come here and stay, and see the chimneys and know they're not yours any more, do you think?"

"Oh, yes. Quite easily."

"Well, you know best. Do you remember that afternoon when you and Lawrie came to look at the hawks, and we were both thinking all the time about the P.M Society?"

"I know what _I_ was thinking about. It took you a bit longer, as I recall."

"Textbook case, I know. It's a wonder Father didn't haul me off to a psychologist years before he did. Are you going to forgive me, do you think, ever?"

"It depends on whether you're going to come over here and kiss me."

**Lot 47: a fine 1920s folk shell box by the artist Emma Hemingway, signed. Certificate of authentication obtained from the Museum of Folk Art, Birmingham. A particularly good piece. Reserve set at £75.**

"I suppose this is a judgment from on high for having gone careering about the landscape at the age of sixteen with a car full of sisters without a seatbelt between them and no driving licence."

"I'd never have thought _you_ were prone to nerves, Ro."

"The combination of narrow winding lanes and you in a Land Rover would induce nerves in an oak bookcase - mind that lamb, Lawrie!"

"It would have done for dinner. Yum. Except that you have to leave them for the next person to drive along, don't you? Or is that just pheasants?"

"You really are a baby sometimes. What, to use a horrid neologism, is _with_ the Land Rover? Or the headscarf, either?"

"_I_ think it suits me. Nicola always did demure, so I thought I'd try it too, and if it made me look like the Queen I could just take it off again. Besides, it's the latest thing to come over all county. All the mothers in Sophia's class crowd round looking _precisely_ like Mrs Merrick's Nellie."

"Why is Sophia in a class full of mothers? I know the tabloids keep screeching on about teenage pregnancies, but I thought she was about eight."

"You know what I mean. Is it all very different from California?"

"Precisely the same. I could have sworn I saw the National Yo-Yo Museum behind that hedgerow."

"Oh, _Ro_! It does sound like a weird place for you to be raising horses, if you don't mind me saying. It ought to be Montana or Kentucky or somewhere."

"You think I'm exercising the dear dobbins on the Disneyland parking lot, don't you? It couldn't be less like that. If you're not absolutely _set_ on freshly slaughtered lamb, we could try Colebridge somewhere."

"There's a boutique sushi bar and noodle shop where the fish and chip place used to be."

"Good Lord."

"I was in the Radio Times, you know."

"I know. You sent me a copy. So did Esther and so did Ann. We're all terribly impressed with you. All those people sitting down every day with tea and a biscuit to hear your bell-like tones echoing out over Borsetshire. If I had a souvenir tea-towel by me I'd ask you to sign it."

"People _do_. Tea towels and maps of Ambridge and all sorts. Do they _have_ them in America any more?"

"Maps of Ambridge? I suppose homesick expats might have exported one or two."

"Tea towels."

"No, it's all done by robots. We must be well into the six hundred acres by now, don't you think?"

"I don't know. It was always Nick who knew that stuff, not me. I say, I wonder what the tenant-farmer will think of having hordes of war bores charging up and down his lane looking for planes."

"I imagine he'll put a trestle table out at the front and sell jam and eggs to them."

"I _wish_ we'd thought of doing that when we were young. Except that there wasn't a museum at Trennels, then, because we were living there. There used to be people looking for the airfield, though."

"Yes, I know. Daddy always found them a nuisance. He wouldn't have wanted you encouraging them with eggs."

"We could have _thrown_ eggs at them, then."

"I'm very glad you two and Peter and Ginty didn't think of it."

"Oh, don't get _austere_ with me, Ro. Or were you thinking how much Daddy would have hated all this?"

"He'd have hated the alternative worse, which would be to have the place dynamited."

"Oh."

"As you so rightly say, _oh_."

"I think it'll be quite fun, to pay my one pound fifty and go and look round the place. I can say to Sophia, that's where your Aunt Rowan saved me from falling down the stairs. And so on."

"More than one pound fifty, I'd imagine, unless that Tim friend of yours has managed to cook up some deal like those people who get let into the Victoria and Albert for free to look at their ancestor's clothes."

"His _clothes_?"

"His collection of clothes that he donated."

"Oh. I thought he might p'raps be like that man who used to fling himself into the Bishop's horse-pond in West Wade shouting about the holy baptism of God, and the rest of the week rode round on a tricycle. You haven't asked how Sophia is yet, you know."

"Haven't I? I suppose I assumed that if she'd fallen off a horse and broken her neck you'd have mentioned it. Isn't it rather inconvenient, her being that horsy, in the middle of London?"

"No more than it was for you and Kay, I don't suppose. Anyway, even if she did, she'd be dreadfully staunch. You can't think how peculiar it is having this tiny replica of you or Nicola lying there peacefully asleep in a room full of posters of horses and ships. What would you have done if you'd got a little version of me?"

"Sacked my OB-GYN and then drowned the rat. No, I wouldn't, I'd have let it ride around on two of the horses at once like Astley's Amphitheatre to draw in custom. Is this the turning? Good Lord, doesn't the roof look _small_? I suppose it's the effect of all those films where the little cottage homestead is always played by Chatsworth. I am so glad that roof is no longer my responsibility."

"I was expecting you to say, Oh, but I remember this."

"I suppose Kay and I rather did repeat ourselves that year."

"I cried about the hall-stand and the drawing-room sofa."

"Not in front of me, you didn't. You're not likely to do it again, are you?"

"It depends on whether I get lovely sushi in the next half-hour or so or not."

"Sushi in Colebridge I can reluctantly believe. _Lovely_ sushi is more of a mental jump... Whatever is all that smoke?"

"Rick-burning?"

"People may be a little behind the times in these parts, but I don't think they're still mired in the Swing Riots - Lawrie, turn this contraption round. I swear that fire's coming up through the conservatory roof."

"Manderley's in flames! Only it couldn't be, could it, not really?"

"I'm very much afraid it could. And damn, damn, no reception - is there still a phone-box at the end of the lane?"

"Yes, I think so - sorry - I didn't mean to bounce you like that."

"_N'importe_. Lawrie, I never thought I'd say this to you, but - "

"Yes, Ro?"

"Drive like hell."

**Author's Note:**

> Poetry quoted is from T S Eliot's _Burnt Norton._ Many thanks to Owl, beta-reader and Marlowpicker extraordinaire!


End file.
